Burn It All Clean
by Red Molly
Summary: "That IS her real name," he said. "It's just the first time in fifteen years she's been able to use it." You never know who you're going to wind up depending on. Branch Connally/OC. Eventual crossover with Justified. Those of you that read me will know why. Enjoy!
1. Time of Day

Walt passed the woman on his way up the stairs to the office, nodded in greeting. She proffered a bright smile and he paid her little attention until she turned up the steps to follow him into the office.

"Oh, good morning," he said, swinging the door open for her. She smiled, struggling with the last two steps.

"You don't have to do that," she stated, limping through the doorway. Ruby looked up from her desk, approval over the top of her glasses.

"Well it's the way my mama raised me. Is there anything I can do to help you?"

The woman's hands were dug down in her pockets by this time, and she looked up from under her hair. "Oh, I'm sorry." She stuck out her hand. "My name is Eileen Music. I…I'm looking for a friend of mine. We served together in the Iraq conflict and when I googled his name it pulled up y'all's office?"

"Oh?"

"His name is Branch Connally?" She asked it. "He was a lieutenant and I guess now he's…."

She stopped, looked up again. Walt's face was suddenly impassive, but if you had eyes the twinge at the corner of his mouth was a dead give away. The pause got heavy. "Ah. Running against the incumbent. Which I would guess is you?"

The smile was tight. Ruby's approval had turned to a frown.

"Boy, me and my big mouth," Eileen half whispered. "I'm sorry, Sheriff…"

"Walt." Longmire's smile eased on out; Branch could be misleading and she seemed nice enough. "Ruby, do we have any coffee made?"

Ruby closed her bible and rose to her feet. "Shortly. I forgot to put the water in. Cady and Henry have both called, and Ferg said he would be late this morning. They have a calf coming backwards and it's gotten dramatic."

"Any word from Vic?"

"She's…."

"Right behind you Walt!" Moretti breezed through and to her desk. "I haven't run those plates yet, so that's on the itinerary and…." She paused.

"Eileen, this is Vic Moretti."

Eileen proffered the same bright smile and sudden right hand. "Nice to meet you, Deputy."

The telepathic 'whatthefuckWaltwhoisthis' sailed over Eileen's head and Walt offered a quizzical smile. Vic HATED it when he did that. "Eileen served with Branch. She was just wondering where she could find him."

Vic turned a megawatt smile on Eileen. "Did you try out at his dad's place? He spends a lot of time out there."

"I hunted for a number, but I couldn't find a way to get hold of him. I didn't wanna just show up unannounced, you know…"

Vic shrugged. Ruby appeared with a cup of coffee for Walt and Eileen. "That's a good way to get shot out here, young lady. Although I doubt Barlow would shoot a woman these days. Civilized as he's become and all." Ruby's smile was more welcoming than Eileen had expected, and she took the coffee gratefully. "I can raise Branch on the radio if you like—he had a long shift last night."

She had almost forgotten what small town drama does to a room when a lot of the key players are present. Geezum H. Roosevelt Crow. "Really Ruby, if he's going to be in sometime soon, would you just give him my phone number?"

The pause. The pass of eyes between the three of them. Eileen ducked back down in her coffee. Ruby smiled easy again. "I'd be glad to, Miss…"

"Music." Eileen rattled off the number and finished her cup. "You make a good pot of coffee, Miss Ruby." She turned, began to limp for the door. "Thank you all for your help."

"Oh no problem at all," Walt drawled. The _quizzical_ had not left his face. They watched in pain as Eileen pulled herself out of the office door and closed it gently behind her. Walt turned to his office. Vic waited until they heard the creak of his chair, snapped on a pair of gloves, and dug out her print-kit.

The secretary watched from behind her glasses as Vic dusted the yellow coffee mug. Vic smirked and lifted three wholes and a partial.

"She seemed like a nice girl," Ruby remarked.

* * *

Branch hauled back and belted the teenager in the mouth before she had the chance to raise the four by four again. The meth-addled teen shrieked, found her feet, and launched herself at his face, chipped red nails akimbo. Branch just followed the physics and bear-hugged her. Fortune was on him, because when he clamped down, her arms had somehow untangled and were pinned against his chest. She struggled. He cinched his arms in. She screamed like a banshee and tried to claw at his chest. Branch squeezed some more. She started to wheeze and Branch torqued in one more notch. Her blonde head flopped a couple times at the end of her neck, and then she stopped struggling altogether. Connally flung her off him and looked across the way at her Chicano boyfriend. The boy hadn't moved from where Branch'd dropped him, so he took a long breath, rattled off her rights, and hauled her out to his cruiser. She was still moderately conscious so he cuffed her to the handle over the door and went back for her unconscious boyfriend.

He was tempted just to throw the little asshole in the trunk, but they called that cruel and unusual punishment these days. Kinda like the headache he was growing. The girl had clocked him a good one across the forehead with that four by four and the hole was leaky now. He cuffed the boy to the opposite door and picked up the CB mic on the radio.

"Ruby, come in."

"I read you, Branch. How's your shift?"

"I found'em. The ol' singlewide trailer north of Callahan's."

"Oh good. You have them in custody, then." She stated it, and that was worth something when Ruby believed in you.

"Yeah. I'll be in in a little bit."

"Good. I have a message for you when you get back."

"Connally out."

"Be careful coming back. There's a thunderstorm on the radar."

"Yes ma'am." He half smiled, but that hurt his head too. He pulled out of the dry lot the trailer was situated on and rolled west. Ruby hadn't been kidding. The sky over top of town looked about the color of a new bruise. The color didn't quite go with the white-hot of the late morning, but that would change as soon as he hit the weather.

* * *

The meth-heads were conscious before he made it back, and so he had the pleasure of dragging their protesting carcasses out of the back of the car in the pour down rain. Of course he'd left his coat at the office. Getting them up the stairs was a real treat. The lightning strikes were so close the thunder was literally rattling the windows. He gritted his teeth and slammed the cell door behind them. The girl was still screaming. Somebody had cranked the air conditioning up and he shivered suddenly. Goosebumps crawled up his back and popped the sticky-wet shirt loose off his hide.

"You look like you need a band-aid, Branch," Ferg offered. His eager face was accompanied by the first aid kit and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Connally grunted and dragged over into the bathroom. Ruby had the grace to wait all of five minutes before she bustled in behind him.

"Sit down." She was blunt, and because Ruby so rarely asked for anything, Branch did as he was told. The cut on his forehead was around an inch and a half long. She dabbed it clean, but it wouldn't quit bleeding. He held a paper towel to his forehead while they dug through the kit together. They located the last two butterfly bandages on the bottom of the kit. Ruby smeared the cut with Bacitracin and closed the soppy little wound with the bandages.

"You're going to have to go to the drug store before you go home."

"I've got the stuff I need at the house, Ruby. Thank you, though."

"Hang on…." She left the bathroom and he stood and followed her out, wincing. The thunderstorm was easing off, but the change in the barometric pressure was playing hob with his sinuses. Branch felt sour as rotted beef.

Ruby was digging through her purse and came up with an orange prescription bottle. "Here." She wrapped his hand around it.

"Ruby…."

"It's just Tylenol 3. They gave it to me before I finally went and got those cortisol shots in my knees."

"Ruby I can't take these."

"Take two. Drink a pot of coffee. Write your report. Make your phone calls. You probably have a concussion."

For whatever reason, he hadn't thought about that.

"Bwaah." He stretched, fished two pills out of the bottle, and swallowed them dry. The coffee was a couple hours old but he drank it anyway and started another pot. In a place with big sky, like AbsarokaCounty, the light after storms is bright, clear, and a little unsettling. A slash of it was lying across Branch's desk, and adjust the blinds as he may, there was little he could do to protect himself from it. The girl started screaming unintelligibly as soon as he got within her line of sight, and that chill he'd picked up earlier hit him again. His head was beginning to feel like lead and his instinct was to prop the chunk of bone up on his head. Of course, that was out of the question. A man had his pride.

The meth-heads both fell asleep a couple hours into the report. The pain was retrograde now, backing into a dull, consistent thud. The Ferg left to take over Moretti's road shift and the place went quiet.

Moretti came in half-distracted until she realized, part-way through hanging up her jacket, that he was sitting at his desk. He saw her nostrils flare out of the corner of his eye and still flinched when she slapped that file down on his desk.

"_Who_ is this?" She braced one hand on his desk and one on her hip and leaned down into his face. "You look like hell."

When she was like this, you usually had two choices. You could either follow Moretti's train of thought (because she was probably right) or you could fight her.

"Are you on the rag or somethin'?" He half snarled it.

She stood up, her lips pulled back from her own teeth. "She came in here looking for you today, Branch. Whoever SHE is." Ruby looked up over her glasses and hissed in disappointment.

"I'm sorry, Branch. I forgot to tell you!"

He frowned. "Tell me what, Ruby?

"That girl! She came in here and left you her number!"

He frowned harder, and then looked down at the folder. He flipped it open.

Oh. Ooooh. His ears started ringing and he sorted a little deeper.

"Her prints aren't in the FBI data base, that name is fake and that's _not _her real social security number." Moretti planted a hand on her hip again.

He looked up and his brow slowly released. "Did she have a limp?"

Vic backed up a step. "Yes…"

"Which leg?"

Moretti watched Branch's face. "The right."

He nodded slightly. "Right handed or left?"

"Right handed," said Ruby. She was quiet as she went on. "She…Miss Music said she served with you in Iraq?"

He nodded. Or something like that.

He picked up the sheaf of papers from the folder and dropped them in the shredder. Vic's eyebrows shot straight up, and Ruby took her glasses off entirely.

Branch's mouth had an angle Ruby had only seen once before.

"Ruby, could I have that number?"

"Branch." Moretti was back to that edge again. "Who the fuck is she?"

"She's somebody you violated the privacy of without any kind of reason, Vic." He signed off of the data base he'd been on and turned off his computer. He stood up and eased into his jacket. He was beginning to get sore, and the chill was seeping in around his bones. He came out from behind his desk and took the folded piece of paper Ruby was holding out. "And that IS her real name."

He settled his hat on his head, and then grimaced and took it in his hand. "It's just the first time in fifteen years she's been able to use it."

Walt's door had been cracked open all afternoon and now they all heard him shift in his chair. He swung the door open and leaned on the frame. "So who is she, Branch?" The measure. The challenge. The million reasons Walt Longmire had not to trust Branch Connally.

"Eileen Music…" he paused, because he had never called her by that name out loud. "…..I trust her. She got that limp keeping me alive. That is all you need to know about her. That's all _anybody_ needs to know. Ya hear me?"

He walked out the office door and left it hanging wide open.


	2. Intel

Eileen's cell phone buzzed and she flinched, turned it over in her hand. It was a Wyoming number. She let it ring twice more, then accepted the call.

"So."

Infinitesimally, her shoulders began to relax. "Hello, Connally."

"Where are you?"

"Motel."

"Which one?"

"There's more than one?"

A dry chuckle. "Meet me out at the four way stop. If you came in on the east side of town, you came through it."

"I remember."

"Good." He hung up. Music's gut churned. She hadn't been expecting that storm. She ducked across the parking lot, slid into the cab of the old Lariat. In another life, the truck had been two-tone blue. The upholstery was thin gray at best and holey at the edges. It coughed twice before the engine caught. Eileen added 'reliable transportation' to her list of needs and pointed the pickup east.

Branch was parked in the middle of the fourway with his hazard lights on, leaning against the trunk of his car. The rain water sat in quick-drying puddles on the pavement, seeping into the cracked tar. The wind was up enough to make him want his coat again, but he'd shucked it in the car and he could already see her coming.

She rolled up behind him and put the truck in park. Eileen stepped down from the cab more quickly than she had intended and fell hard. The pop that accompanied her left ankle wasn't anything to the jolt that ran across her hip structure.

Connally was at her in seconds or less, pulling her to her feet, pushing her hair back out of her eyes, looking her in the face, folding her up against him. Neither one of them could look at the other just then. Branch swallowed hard.

"_Dammit _Music." He rasped it.

"Dear God don't _cry_," she said, her own face turned in against his chest.

"Shut up. It's allergies."

He stood her back from him, hands on her arms. He peered. "For real."

"S'true." The bones in her face were sharp in the last of the storm light.

"That's a good Southern accent."

"Because it's the real one."

He measured. She measured.

"Come on. You don't weigh enough."

"And you're pushy. Why the hole in your head?"

"Ruby tells me it's fashionable."

He shoved her back toward the truck and she hissed with the pain. He winced. "Where are we going?"

"Food. Drink. Clean this cut and wrap that ankle. You need a better place than Jim's to stay."

They followed the road east to where the blacktop turned to dirt and kept moving south. Branch's house was tucked back in the hill. High enough up that he could see anything coming north or going south. Deep enough in the fold of the hill that you weren't going to see the place unless you were looking for it. The road up to it was cut out with dynamite and patience. If she was going to build a fort, this is where Eileen would have built it.

She pulled in behind him and leaned on both the vehicles on her way up the drive. "How long have you had this place?"

"Since I got back. There's been a house and outbuildings here since before the Civil War. The Butterfield stage line ran through here for a while, and then mail coaches up through the early 1900's. This was a way station up until they quit running the stage and then Elliot Quamsley bought the ground and started running cattle. His kids ran cattle and their kids got in over their heads gambling in Vegas and bankrupted the whole thing and it came up for auction and that's how I got it."

"It's a good spot."

He turned at the top of the porch steps. "You haven't seen the view yet."

"I don't want to see the view. I want to _eat_." She was about halfway up the body of his car, fighting with the steep of the ground and her own lack of balance.

"You're leavin' hand prints on my paint job," he remarked, thumping back down the steps. He slung her arm around his shoulder and they eased forward. After a beat he said, "You know they make canes."

"Yeah. I don't want one."

"You know they make prosthetics."

"I don't want a prosthesis, Branch." She raked her hair back from her face. "I want a steak."

He half smiled at that. "Well your ungrateful ass gets to peel the potatoes then."

She grinned at him.

They laid waste to Branch's small kitchen. It was too dark to eat outside by the time they had the steaks thawed and cooked, but the mashed potatoes and ("How did you get these out HERE?" she had asked) green beans complimented everything. They leaned back from the table, satisfied with their handiwork.

"Ankle."

"Forehead."

The bathroom literally proved too small for both of them at the same time. Music sat on a rolling chair in his bedroom with the kit on her lap and handed him the necessary tools. He dragged her chair –with her on it- back into the kitchen under the lights so he could see what he was doing with the ACE bandage. He grabbed one of the kitchen stools and plopped down with his back against the cabinets while she eased her left boot off.

This was the good foot. The scar tissue was pliable and all the bones were in place. She had all five of her toes and she could move them all but the littlest one. She proved it, scrunching them together and turning them loose a couple of times. He hesitated for a moment.

"Don't baby it. The skin's fine." Her hair was back in her face.

He pulled the foot up in his lap and took her word for it. She flexed her foot downward when he was done, scrunched her toes once more, and looked down at her booted right foot. Contemplation was evident.

"You stayin' here tonight? If you are, you might as well pull that one off too."

She looked up, chagrin and laughter behind her hair. The only lights on in the house were the kitchen lights, so when dry lightning chained across the sky it was enough to pull their attention back out to the front porch.

Branch chunked his own boots over in a corner and snagged that handle of Jack he'd been saving on his way out to the porch. Lena knew enough to get the glasses.

Neither one of them really wanted to talk about the reality of the situation just yet anyway.

* * *

She had come out on the porch barefoot, and that was a big deal. At this point, a shoe was all the support she was going to allow herself so the limp looked huge. Right now, though, in the morning light on his couch, you couldn't tell anything. The right boot was already on and her left sock was not cooperating with her. He watched from the kitchen as he flipped the eggs. She started cussing presently, and he couldn't help the laugh.

She jerked around and glared at him from behind her hair. "What?"

He shook his head. "Nothin'."

"My ass." She limped into the kitchen and he jerked a thumb toward the coffee maker. "_What, _Connally?"

"You are the only person that I know who puts on one sock and one shoe at a time."

She laughed. He'd always been careful of her pride. In the beginning, she believed that she was entitled to that consideration. Nothing could be further from the truth. Time had proven that. She poured herself a cup of coffee and stretched. Connally was a good cook.

"You know what would be good with these eggs?"

"Huh?" over his shoulder.

"Impala."

He half turned and snickered at her. "That was a good day."

"I learned to believe in your cooking that day."

"You should have never doubted my cooking in the first place." He laughed and dropped an egg on her tin plate. "You know what I learned to believe in that day?"

"Do tell." She had a pair of forks in hand and tossed him one.

"Your real hair color."

She looked up at him from behind it. He reached out and gave one rough strand a tug on his way to pull the napkins out of the drawer. The awkward. The memory that went with the statement.

She winced. "Me an' my big mouth."

He looked up, sharp. "You're coming out from under that shit, Music. F'I have to drag you out by your hair."

She didn't know what to say.

They had breakfast out on the porch because Branch ALWAYS ate outside when he could. So did she. Connally hadn't been lying about the view. The country dropped off from Branch's castle and swept outward like it was in a hurry to get to the far blue mountains to their north. 0700 was a pale time here, the sky looking like it had been bleached out just a little bit. What would have been scarlet was a tender crimson. What would have been green looked like frost. The wind was stirring around outside of the fold of the hill and every once in a while it would venture inward and brush across the face of the house.

"Branch?"

"Hmmwhaa?" A mouthful of sausage wasn't much impediment.

"How come you're running for sheriff?"

He sat his fork down and took his time swallowing. That pale light made it so his hair looked gray. The confusion was evident in his eyes, but she waited. The cords he'd tied around that line of thought came unwound slowly.

The wind kicked up and dragged her hair back from her face. He could see the red in the roots.

"Because I can't quit now."

She nodded. He needed to make something out of himself and this was the only way. Like he wasn't enough already by himself. She understood, and went back to her breakfast. He shook his head.

She looked back up on him. "You know that place across the hill from here?"

He sat up. The fact that it was for sale went unspoken. "Yeah. That fifty acre plot. With the heated barn."

"I'm closing on it this afternoon."

He sat up a little straighter and grinned. "Aw yeah?"

"Yes. It's paid for."

The grin got a little bit bigger. "For real."

"S'true."

"How come?"

She swallowed and raised her coffee mug momentarily. "Because there are only six people on this planet that I trust. One of them's me. Four of them are gone on. That leaves your sorry ass. I….I have no option."

Branch leaned back. Her quick change aside, the thoughts she'd pushed him into aside, she was here again. And he was going to get to watch her learn how to walk in the world again instead of pretending she was a piece of the dark. He was going to _help her do it. _

"You mean I'm going to have to move your gimp carcass into a nine thousand square foot house?"

"Well…not yet….."

"You didn't get any furniture, did you?"

"No…."

He rolled his eyes.

She threw her toast crust at him.

Branch got a call shortly thereafter from Ruby and Eileen looked down the driveway with some consternation.

"I don't waaaant a cane!" He mocked her.

"Beat you with it if I had one," she glared.

He eased his hat down on his head, careful of the bandage, and swaggered down to her truck door. He popped it open and held it for her while she took an inordinate amount of time coming down the driveway. On purpose.

He shook his head, and then winced when his hat band rubbed across the bandage.

"You never did tell me what happened to your noggin." She'd made it into the cab and had threaded the key into the starter.

"I encountered a four by four post."

She cackled. "On your own?"

"There was a meth-addled teenager on the other end of it."

The snicker turned into a giggle and her bright smile dug its way out from under her hair.

"Get outta here. You're blockin' my driveway."

* * *

"You realize he wasn't asking about her appearance." Vic said it out of the blue three days later, while she and Walt were outbound to Herschel's. Break in. Routine.

"Who?" He cut an eye toward her.

"Branch. When he was asking us to describe that Music woman."

Walt turned this over in his mind. "Can I assume"—he wopped the Bronco into a pot-hole in the road and they both winced—"can I assume that you have some kind of idea why?"

"He asked about the permanent stuff, Walt. Her limp, which hand she used…..."

"So?"

"So we know based on that that he hasn't seen her since he got home. And that she has a habit of changing her appearance on a regular basis."

"And?" Walt was quizzical again. Moretti sometimes got the inkling that he just did it to piss her off, but it drove her _crazy._

"So…military exposure, changes her appearance, lies about her name to people she trusts…"

"Branch said that WAS her real name."

"Because a field officer in the Central Intelligence Agency is going to tell an Army sergeant the truth."

"You wanna know something Vic?"

"Shoot."

"I'm not really worried about her."

"Walt, she drug into our office like she owned the place and…"

"That's what you saw?"

Vic shot him a look.

"You wanna know what I saw?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"I saw a scared woman looking for an old friend. And if she wasn't lying, then it took her some nerve to use that name again."

Vic shut up. Walt didn't say anything for another twenty minutes or so. Right before they reached Herschel's drive he turned to her. "How come she rubs you so wrong?"

"I just have a feeling."

"Oh."

They worked through the material at Herschel's—he was cranky, all three of them knew who it probably was and it pained Walt. Vic shook her head. Herschel's mouth twitched when they didn't come out and say it. But Walt was as judicious with his caution as he was with his marksmanship. Two decades previous, Herschel had had that judicious nature to thank for his freedom, and he remembered it now and kept his mouth closed.


	3. The Calm Before

"You realize," his voice echoed up to the second floor, "that this house is like, half an acre all by itself, right?" Branch had temporarily parked himself on the only piece of furniture in her living room; it was a couch, brown, cushy, and possessive enough that he had to fight with it in order to stand.

"Actually, it's closer to a fifth of an acre."

Eileen leaned over the railing of the second floor loft and grinned at him, glowing in the daylight. The windows in her front room were monstrous, soaring things, literally two stories high. They faced east, and she could see the smoke trail from Connelly's house from where she stood. There was going to be a four-wheeler trail between the two houses before the winter was out. She and Branch had already decided.

Branch stretched, craned his neck to look up at her. "What are you going to do with it all?"

"Wreck it." She grinned. "I throw magnificent parties!"

"You're a liar."

Eileen stuck her tongue out at him and stumped down the stairs. He'd hauled three or four duffle bags inside from her truck and piled them at the foot of her stairs. She plucked the green one from the pile and started dragging it up the stairs.

"Well at least the kitchen's nice," Branch drawled. He admired the marble counter tops over an arm-load of boxes.

"True that."

They hauled the rest of her kit inside, and he thanked GOD the living room set had a fold-out couch because the woman would have been sleeping on the floor otherwise. He wasn't about to tolerate _that_.

"Have you ordered anything else? Bedroom furniture? Kitchen, whatnot?"

"Not yet. Was gonna…." She paused and huffed for breath, wrestling with one of the diamond-plate steel boxes as she dragged it across her front porch. "Was gonna order them online."

He rolled his eyes. "Cause you're going to be able to pull a connection fast enough clear out here for THAT."

She smirked. "Check your phone, Branch."

He was hesitant, but he did. Full bars. Huh.

She was still expectant, like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"You don't have ze interwebz on your phone?" She was almost childish in the query.

"No. There's never been enough juice or enough need for it."

"Shame." She sighed and went back underneath her hair and continued to wrestle with the box. Branch carried three boxes around her and through to the kitchen before she finally asked for help.

"Where's it going?"

"The basement." She picked up the back end, he picked up the front end, and between the two of them, they managed to make the descent without further incident. The basement was featureless at this point. No divisions of space, no shelves, no nothing.

"What do you have IN there?"

She popped the lid and showed him the equipment. He cocked his head, pegged her with a look.

"Well I have to make a living somehow, Branch."

The silence was cloying, hanging off of the banisters and choking up on Eileen's crouched form on the basement floor.

He shook his head. "You realize they hung you out to dry once already…."

"I'm not working for Central Intelligence any longer, Branch."

He turned and glared, rubbing his filthy hands across his knees. "Because working with_out_ the cover of an agency is any SMARTER…."

"It's just ANALYSIS, Branch."

"It'll get you killed without shelter, too."

She sighed, steadying herself on the lid of the box as she stood. "Listen. History aside, I am one of the finest analysts to come along in the last three decades. MI6 is already in. It's just data processing. Money trails. Things like that."

He ran a hand up through his hair. It was so much more. It was ALWAYS more with these people. She KNEW that.

"You need to find a safer occupation."

"I'm going to be in a basement in Wyoming. There's nothing OUT here. There is no REASON to bother with me."

He stomped back up the steps, leaving her to fight with them on her own. Eileen knew all too well what she was getting into. Branch had every reason to be upset with her.

* * *

She settled in, careful, quiet around town, and Durant moved over and made room

for her. Ruby made it a point to speak to Eileen on the street any time she saw her, and they became friends. They traded books - Ruby handed Eileen a couple on the history of Absaroka County and Eileen handed her a copy of The Things They Carried, and later The Pillars Of The Earth. They would hash the books out over coffee at the diner.

She had a couple of moving trucks get lost and have to ask locals for directions to her house, but that wasn't entirely out of the ordinary. She traded the ancient Lariat she'd been driving for a 2005 F-250 (paid CASH, too!) and based on the fact that she was buying fencing supplies in town it was assumed she was going to put horses on the property. There wasn't enough ground or water to run cattle. Slowly, slowly, people began to understand that this new woman wasn't too awful weird after all.

Branch didn't say much about her, but Vic watched. The Ferg kept her in his periphery because The Ferg kept a LOT of things in his periphery. Walt ignored her for the most part, and things went on like usual.

* * *

One evening Branch pulled up to his house to find Eileen camped on his front porch. She was wearing clean jeans and her leather jacket. He'd seen that jacket before. He knew exactly what that foretold.

"What?"

"Alcohol?" She waved a bottle at him, unopened.

His one good grin eased across his face. He hadn't been expecting this from her for a while yet. "Come on. I have a better idea."

She ratcheted herself up out of the chair, set the bottle on the porch railing, and followed his lead.

He let his inner teenager out of the box and they hit every high spot and waterhole between his house and town. The swimming holes were 'for next year,' but with frost in the air, that big Wyoming sky was getting absolutely breathtaking and the high spots were necessary. "For your education," he said. Eileen stood with her head tilted back, mouth open at the heavenly spectacle.

They wound up at The Red Pony playing pool, dead sober and cat-calling one another like kids. Henry Standing Bear took note and said nothing. The strongest thing either one of them drank was black coffee. Branch THRASHED Eileen four rounds out of five. She blamed it on everything from too much extraneous noise to her back trying to go out on her. The Red Pony rarely closed before 2AM on weekends, but neither one of them were interested in closing anything down. They were just playing hard. Around midnight, Branch finished his coffee and steered his friend for the swinging doors.

It wasn't until the cold bit her cheeks that Eileen realized she'd pulled her hair back from her face. Branch had moved beyond her to open the driver's side lock on his car before he noticed that she'd stopped, a hand half-raised to her face. Her eyes were wide.

He cocked his head. He knew.

"It looks good that way," Connally remarked, and started the car.


	4. Undercurrent

A/N: HOLYCRAPIGOTACHAPTERUP! (dances with excitement) Sorry for the disappearance. Some exposition here, but know that a storm, as promised, is brewing.

0oooooooo000000000ooooo0000

They made a habit of dropping in on one another unannounced. Branch knew where the hide-a-key was and she kept a lock-pick kit in her back pocket and they made themselves at home. They got her fence up before the ground really decided to freeze, and Branch was planning on making her wait until one of the spring sales for a horse when she stopped in one Wednesday morning with cherry pastries (She liked to bake! Who knew?) and a well-perused copy of Horse Trader.

"No," he said as he poured the coffee.

She looked up from the sale ads. "Hmmm?"

"Not out of the Trader. We need to wait til springtime. It'd be rough on a horse bringing it up higher elevation and you don't have your barn winterized yet."

"But a lot of these horses are local."

"Yeah." He sighed and looked over her shoulder. "That horse has been beat to shit."

"How do you know?"

"Because of who owns it. And that one has weak structure in the legs."

"Pretty though."

"Pretty does you no good out here if the bone structure doesn't hold up."

"What's it matter about his legs?"

"The forelegs are really thin. Not a whole lot of bone, not a whole lot of support, and that animal weighs upwards of twelve hundred pounds. The legs go out on you, you don't have a horse. You need solid bone out here and that breeder likes show ponies and doesn't give a damn about whether they can work or not."  
"So arena horses."

"Not even that. Western Pleasure." The disdain in Branch's voice had Eileen cackling.

"I like the color of that one."

"That horse. That horse is a sunuvabitch."

She rolled her eyes.

"You know those scars under my right arm? On the rib cage?"

"Yeah…"

"Breaking him. I was seventeen and he was two. Do the math. He's ancient and he's still a shit-head. You have no business with an animal like that. Nobody does."

"Alright then all-knowing, what DO I have business with?"

"Lemme see that." Branch adroitly removed the catalogue from her hand, picked up a pen, and began circling pictures. He stopped halfway through the ads with pictures and flipped to the back, reading between the lines of the plain classifieds while Eileen arranged the pastries on an oil-stained cookie sheet and tossed them in the oven.

Branch stayed absorbed in the catalogue until she plopped a saucer in front of him. He snapped the catalogue closed and handed it back to her. "Pick one." He took a bite out of the pastry while she slid her hands down the pages.

"This red one?"

"Why?"

She looked up, half in thought. She KNEW how to ride—Branch had SEEN her ride—but she didn't know jack about what made a keeper of a horse.

"Um…"

He grinned at her. "Analyze everything in that catalogue that I circled. Then see if you can snag last month's copy from the feed store and go through that. Find similar animals in that one. Bring'em to me. When you're picking the good stuff, THEN we'll go look at live horses."

She rolled her eyes and took a bite of pastry. She knew what he was doing, appreciated it even. She just wasn't used to being the one that wasn't in the know.

* * *

_Dublin: 18 August, 2000_

_ She'd braided and unbraided her hair twice while she sat out in the open at the café. Shoulda brought a book. Shaunessy was late, but that was not uncommon. He strolled in with that leather jacket hung across his shoulder, the oxfords and the hem of his pants damp with the rain and his hair beginning to kink. He didn't look like he was hurting. For what that was worth. _

_ "Hey love," he offered as he dropped into the chair opposite her. _

_ "Good evening," she smiled, relaxed for the moment. There were eyes. There were always eyes. _

_ "Anything new?"_

_ "Not really." She walked her fingers around a set of words on the newspaper under her elbow- she'd left it untouched, turned upward to the headline. He tilted his chin up. _

_ "And have you ordered yet?" _

_ "Was waiting on you, dear," she smiled. The food here was good, and that was worth something at least. Things were going to get dicey and she would prefer such exercises on a full stomach. So did he, and they tucked in. _

_ When they crossed the border that night, he had a black gun folded against his shoulder and she was as wired as they could get her without suspicion. There was always suspicion. She was searched with due diligence and Michael decided that it was enough. He pulled a hood over her head and carefully eased her into the car. They'd gone through the routine a couple of times now and she'd razzed him about banging her knees the last trip over. The car started and she wondered how in the blue hell Shaunessy ever kept up with them. The man's strength was hydraulic._

_ ….._

_Washington, D. C.: 02, August, 2001_

_ None of that hydraulic strength did Shaunessy any good at the moment of his death. An over-zealous, by the book, blighted son of Britain's finest had made information available. You know. Because that was what he was supposed to do. Even though he'd received direct orders not to. Britain lost a damn strong operative that day, never mind the fact that the entire program went up in flames. The CIA blamed MI6. MI6 blamed the American operative. _

_ Eileen Music blamed it on herself. _

_ The CIA pulled her. The damage was done. They were kind enough to give her a modicum of time to rest. "Have you recovered? Can you present for an assignment?"_

_ Of course she could. _

_ "This one will be easy." _

_ "Oh?" _

_ Wallace handed her the dossier, looked up over his glasses. "At least it _should_ be." _

_ "I see." She leafed through the ream of paper, walking away from the senior agent's desk. It was not considered good form to turn one's back on Wallace. It was considered VERY poor form to ignore his remarks. Music did not care this day. _

_On the plane out, she crawled inside the dossier, turning every element over in her mind. Well…it probably wasn't going to be any easier, but at least she was going to get to be outside during this one. She liked the desert, and better still, she wasn't going to lose anyone. If Wallace had meant to punish her with physical labor and isolation, he had missed his mark. _

_She hoped it was viciously hot. Dublin was as bad as London when it came to the rain and the cold. She was done with both. She raised a hand slightly, asking the stewardess -_bored right-handed articulate exhausted waaaaaaay too young-_ for three fingers of Laphroaig. This was not coach, after all. She should be able to get what she wanted. _

_The stewardess was nothing if not qualified. One graceful arm extended, a cabinet door squeaked, and she placed a green glass tumbler on the counter where Eileen could see it. The Scotch resided in a cut-crystal decanter, and the stewardess was careful of the stopper when she removed it. A childhood disaster was responsible for this treatment, but that was something no-one ever needed to know. Cautiously, she poured the alcohol and delivered it to Music's seat within the space of twenty seconds. Class. _

_Music popped three hundred milligrams worth of sleeping pills out of the blister pack, palmed them, and picked up the tumbler. Silently, she toasted Shaunessy's memory with his own drink. She slept the rest of the flight into Istanbul._

* * *

Far be it from Branch to complain about an excellent adolescent Scotch. He never did understand, though, why she kept such a monster of a drink decanted for regular use. It wasn't like she had anything to prove.

It wasn't long after the conversation about how to pick a horse that she showed up again. They spun through another catalogue, but she didn't have her heart in it, and Branch knew something had happened.

Two days later Henry Standing Bear looked up from behind his bar at the sound of a dragging foot. This was the first time he'd seen Eileen in broad daylight and he marveled at how pale she was. The place was empty, it being a Wednesday. He offered a smile from his eyes outward, and she returned it.

"What may I do for you this afternoon, Miss Music?" His courtliness reminded her of Shaunessy somehow and it made things harder.

"Um…well…" She had to slow herself, pointedly keeping her hands at her sides. "Henry I'm BORED!"

His brow rose, but he nodded in assent. "That is a common condition in these parts during the winter."

"What I…what I meant to ask was…. Henry, are you hiring?"

He stayed his hands and looked up at her. The glow of the neon-red pony behind him caught across her cheekbones and brow. They regarded one another and it struck Henry Standing Bear, not for the first time, that this woman was too earnest. Eileen Music was like a dog that had not been beaten in a long time.

"Can you keep an effective bar, Miss Music?"

She straightened immediately. "Yes sir I can."

Henry swept an arm wide. "Come. Show me."

She did.

* * *

"So tell me again why you need a job tending bar?"

She threw the bar-rag at Branch and it wrapped around his face with a wet *shlup*. Because she had agreed to be his D.D. tonight and because he had taken FULL advantage of that offer, he allowed the damp cloth to stay long enough to gratify the thrower.

She began sweeping behind the bar. "Well you remember all those pamphlets you were supposed to give out and didn't? About how isolation was bad after trauma?"

His brow wrinkled as he pawed the rag off his head. "Uh-huh."

"Well…" She shrugged.

The finished bottle of beer tipped over on the table in front of him. He scrambled for it and caught it. Eileen mumbled under her breath about the damned drunk and he winged it at her. She caught it, laughing, and then he stacked himself up on his feet and began straightening the chairs and picking up what trash his well-buzzed brain'd let him see and reach.

Henry stuck his head through the office at the laughter. "Mr. Connally, I can't pay you for your time."

"Aw…izalright," Branch grunted, steadying himself on a chair. "She'ss gonna take me…take me home." The 's's were loose on his tongue.

Henry cocked an eye at her.

She rolled her eyes. "Him and me, we have this thing."

"Yeah," Branch agreed. "She drags me 'long and I prop…prop her up."

Eileen's hair fell over her face as she finished up behind the bar. Henry Standing Bear took note and said nothing.

* * *

His patience had not paid off until two years ago when she put her given name on paper. Did she really feel that safe? Typical American arrogance. She understood the business. She knew that her life could well be over when making that choice.

He watched. The lack of a pattern bordered the disgusting as she criss-crossed the United States. The only common thread was isolation. Fringes. The quiet spaces between towns for no more than a day or so. No permanent address. No employment. No medical treatment either-based on the purchases she'd almost died of the flu in December of 2010.

He really couldn't blame her. He didn't like doctors either.

He wiped sweat; it was sweltering in Dubai. He hated this place. He hated it vehemently. Give him the dry air and forging heat of his native Tehran. This festering, oily existence was not something he cared for. The ocean held no charm for him, nor the glittering wealth offered here. Not that he didn't like to get paid; Darab was a practical man who understood needs.

He sat back and watched the screen. A good hacked satellite was worth its' several thousand kilos in gold, but at this moment he'd take that payment in snow. The house she had purchased was too large for her. A man came and went. They shoveled the amassing precipitation on a regular basis, but a cripple always has SUCH difficulty. She applied her considerable skills to gainful employ. It was the American way, after all. One must earn one's keep.

If the truth were known, he had taken pride in that work. She should have died. His skill alone had dictated otherwise. The only regrettable thing about the entire scenario was the briefness of its duration and the poverty of the data.

Remarkable subject.

He had been promised a second opportunity, and the responsible individual rarely failed to deliver. His anticipation was swollen, teetering like the festering wind coming off the bay.


End file.
